I first read this novel at my first bookstore gig, Borders, back in 2005. Nothing has changed. No matter how many times, I read this novel, I come to the same conclusion: I don't get it.
I don't even know what it is I don't get. It is just the story of a group of five teenage sisters in the 1970s who through chance, genetics, circumstance or whathaveyou are all suicidal. By the end of the novel, none of them are alive. That's it, exactly what it says on the tin. But maybe it's the wistful almost distant way it's written, maybe it's the topic itself. I'm not even sure if I want this book to be about something more or something less.
The story is told through the eyes of a group of boys, personified by an anonymous first person plural narrator, who grew up in the same neighborhood as the Lisbon sisters. The writing takes places years and years after the girls' deaths. The 'evidence' they collected about the girls and their lives (most importantly, their deaths) is presented in a pseudo-detective sort of fashion, with evidence such as Exhibits numbers 1-98, witness and interviews with neighbors and people who knew the girls. It's a strange piece of voyeurism, honestly. The girls seem at times to be hyper aware of the fixation people have with them, other times its as if they retreat or simply don't care. It's as if understanding the Lisbon girls and why none of them chose to see her twenties becomes a metaphor for understanding the loss of innocence these men experience in their middle ages. Maybe it's sort of modern Greek tragedy. But where is the hubris? Where is the tragic, fatal flaw of the Lisbon girls? Maybe it's supposed to be about the death of the American dream personified by these suburban girls or specifically a "poignantly sharp and critical portrait of the suburban American life experienced by the baby boom generation," as Wikipedia suggests. I'm not sure.
And I have a feeling that like much like the narrator(s), I'm going to keep visiting this story again and again. I'm going to keep digging, keep searching for meaning, be it personal or universal in the girls' story. Because I can feel it in there, I just can't dig it out. Like the boys who spent their lives playing custodians, biographers, curators and keepers of the memories of the Lisbon girls, I too find I am haunted by the names and lives of Cecilia, Lux, Bonnie, Mary and Therese. Maybe one of these days, I'll be able to find whatever it is I'm looking for. As for now, I just don't know.
[Incidental note: This is one of the few times where I think I'm going to watch the movie to try to understand the book more. I've heard mixed reviews, but after all, it IS Sofia Coppola and I tend to enjoy her work.]
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
I don't read what I consider to be an excessive amount of science fiction or fantasy. I used to, don't get me wrong. Just, these days, I tend to prefer straight fiction or humor, excepting of course Neil Gaiman's body of work which I will continue to devour, reading-wise. Either way, I was pleasantly surprised by this book... though I shouldn't've been. It was a Philip K. Dick award winner, it's about British people and mythology and it had tons of literary references (the guy goes back in time ostensibly to see a Samuel Taylor Coleridge lecture... that's right, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Kahn inspire freakin' time travel, bitches. Oh, pardon me, is my English major showing?)
Either way, the novel was clever. The main character, a historical biographer named Brendan Doyle, goes back in time from 1983 as a part of this group of millionaires (and, unbeknownst to him, evil scientists) going to see an 1810 Coleridge lecture and ends up accidently getting stuck there. It was a lot like Buffy in parts, which made me love it. It didn't take itself too seriously but it was well-thought-out enough that I didn't cringe and say "Really? Really?!" out loud to my faithful but deaf reading companion, my dog Ruby. Doyle ends up living through all these horrors perpetuated by a group of people attempting to control the travel through the streams of time called the Anubis Gates, which are like holes in the ice covering of the river of time. I probably screwed up that metaphor, but still. There's a man called Dog Face Joe who is sort of a werewolf thing who can jump into other peoples bodies, people splitting their spirits, a group of evil disfigured beggers the leader of whom is dressed as a clown on stilts, Doyle realises that he's not the only person from the 20th century when he hears people whistling "Yesterday" by The Beatles--a splendid time is guaranteed for all! Also, there's a woman disguising herself as a tough street boy street urchin. So, see, everything I love pretty much reverts back to drag.
Through hours of strenuous research (ie: idle googling), I discovered that the character of William Ashbless, the poet whose biography Doyle was working on only to discover that he himself IS Ashbless, was actually created as a joke in college with one of his buddies, to kind of poke fun at crappy poets by submitting "nonsensical free verse" to the paper under the Ashbless name.. The link to the wiki is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ashbless
There's a lot of the plot I didn't reveal here, but really, I enjoyed this novel. Good times, two thumbs up.
Either way, the novel was clever. The main character, a historical biographer named Brendan Doyle, goes back in time from 1983 as a part of this group of millionaires (and, unbeknownst to him, evil scientists) going to see an 1810 Coleridge lecture and ends up accidently getting stuck there. It was a lot like Buffy in parts, which made me love it. It didn't take itself too seriously but it was well-thought-out enough that I didn't cringe and say "Really? Really?!" out loud to my faithful but deaf reading companion, my dog Ruby. Doyle ends up living through all these horrors perpetuated by a group of people attempting to control the travel through the streams of time called the Anubis Gates, which are like holes in the ice covering of the river of time. I probably screwed up that metaphor, but still. There's a man called Dog Face Joe who is sort of a werewolf thing who can jump into other peoples bodies, people splitting their spirits, a group of evil disfigured beggers the leader of whom is dressed as a clown on stilts, Doyle realises that he's not the only person from the 20th century when he hears people whistling "Yesterday" by The Beatles--a splendid time is guaranteed for all! Also, there's a woman disguising herself as a tough street boy street urchin. So, see, everything I love pretty much reverts back to drag.
Through hours of strenuous research (ie: idle googling), I discovered that the character of William Ashbless, the poet whose biography Doyle was working on only to discover that he himself IS Ashbless, was actually created as a joke in college with one of his buddies, to kind of poke fun at crappy poets by submitting "nonsensical free verse" to the paper under the Ashbless name.. The link to the wiki is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ashbless
There's a lot of the plot I didn't reveal here, but really, I enjoyed this novel. Good times, two thumbs up.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Chicken Soup for the Soul Cookbook
Yeah, I read these books. Sue me. My grandma used to get them all the time and we'd read them together. I have a pretty soft heart and anything like this tends to make me tear up, at least a little.
Though honestly, there was this one woman who apparently is a big deal in the cooking world (or at least in her her own head) and apparently is friends with the rest of the editors. And she wrote half the darn book. Seriously, it's sweet that her first husband died and she feels like her second husband was selected by the dead one just for her and they have this incredible bond, but still. I got tired of cute stories about Debra and Ted or whatever their names were.
Also, because these were selected primarily for the recipes, a lot of the stories were poorly written or completely unrelated to the dish they showed a recipe for. There were a couple cute stories, but all in all, none of the food sounded that great. One was even a rip off of Thundercake! Which was one of my favorite stories of all time as a kid! Lame, says I.
All in all, I kinda enjoyed reading it but it didn't exactly change my life. I probably should've spent the time on reading Anubis Gate, since that's next on the list.
Though honestly, there was this one woman who apparently is a big deal in the cooking world (or at least in her her own head) and apparently is friends with the rest of the editors. And she wrote half the darn book. Seriously, it's sweet that her first husband died and she feels like her second husband was selected by the dead one just for her and they have this incredible bond, but still. I got tired of cute stories about Debra and Ted or whatever their names were.
Also, because these were selected primarily for the recipes, a lot of the stories were poorly written or completely unrelated to the dish they showed a recipe for. There were a couple cute stories, but all in all, none of the food sounded that great. One was even a rip off of Thundercake! Which was one of my favorite stories of all time as a kid! Lame, says I.
All in all, I kinda enjoyed reading it but it didn't exactly change my life. I probably should've spent the time on reading Anubis Gate, since that's next on the list.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Every time I pick this novel up again, I am completely sucked in.
Summary, courtesy of wikipedia:
But this novel laid bare the bones of the combination of two cultures. Oscar is a lot closer to his immigrant roots than I am... his mother came to the states after a beating in the Dominican Republic under the dictator Trujillo forced her to lose her first child. But still, the link is there. In his life is something not depicted by the iconic images of Americana. Only obscurely in my family tree can you find some light-skinned woman standing in her perfect model kitchen a la the 1950s. I've dealt with the issue of my heritage in a lot of odd ways. As a young child, I wanted to grow up to be a red-head with pale skin and green eyes or a blonde with blue eyes. Basically, I wanted to grow up white. I never considered my dark skin or brown eyes ugly or anything. But my heroes? The characters in the movies I loved? Ariel, the little mermaid and her pale sistern. Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, the epitome of white girl California perfection.
So reading about Oscar's inherent uber-nerdiness? Having to struggle with his super macho male relatives attitudes towards his virginity? Yeah. I could identify with that, as well as the struggle and heartbreak each of his relative goes through just trying to live life. So much emphasis in Hispanic culture and literature deals with perseverence through tragedy, though the ties to your family history for good or bad and an overlaying passion that causes us to tilt at windmills, move to a different country to create a future for our families, defend whores that are married to gangsters. I think every Hispanic family has this rich culture of mythology and almost ghost stories that are passed down. A lot of the younger generations in America just roll their eyes--we're content to instead learn about Nintendo, the internet, gentrification, indie music, German heavy metal, Lord of the Rings and Dungeon and Dragons. I am the only Catholic out of all the grandchildren on my paternal side, and I'm not even confirmed. My grandfather was well along in his preparations to be a priest when he met my grandmother. Of course I over-identify with Oscar's love of anime and high fantasy instead of his own culture. I'm compelled to do so. It's in my blood, too.
But it seems to me that regardless of how much you ignore your elders' talking, it comes home to roost. If it's Oscar's family's curse, the thickening of your waistline into an exact replica of your aunt's or even the food you crave or a superstition. And this book made me wonder a lot more about all that aspect of my personality, as well as an incredible story that made me want to read everything Junot Diaz has ever written, ever. A very emotional, visceral blunt novel that still managed to leave me wanting more. Like I said, I love it.
Summary, courtesy of wikipedia:
The novel is an epic story narrated by Yunior de Las Casas, the protagonist of Díaz's first book Drown and chronicles not just the "brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao," an overweight Dominican boy growing up in Paterson, New Jersey and obsessed with science fiction and fantasy novels, with comic books and role-playing games and with falling in love, but also the curse of the "fukú" that has plagued Oscar's family for generations and the Caribbean (and perhaps the entire world) since colonization and slavery.
The middle sections of the novel center on the lives of Oscar's runaway sister, Lola, his mother, Hypatia "Belicia" Cabral, and his grandfather, Abelard, under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. Rife with footnotes, science fiction and fantasy references, comic book analogies, various Spanish dialects and hip-hop inflected urban English, the novel is also a meditation on story-telling, Dominican diaspora and identity, masculinity, the contours of authoritarian power and the long horrifying history of slavery in the New World.
But this novel laid bare the bones of the combination of two cultures. Oscar is a lot closer to his immigrant roots than I am... his mother came to the states after a beating in the Dominican Republic under the dictator Trujillo forced her to lose her first child. But still, the link is there. In his life is something not depicted by the iconic images of Americana. Only obscurely in my family tree can you find some light-skinned woman standing in her perfect model kitchen a la the 1950s. I've dealt with the issue of my heritage in a lot of odd ways. As a young child, I wanted to grow up to be a red-head with pale skin and green eyes or a blonde with blue eyes. Basically, I wanted to grow up white. I never considered my dark skin or brown eyes ugly or anything. But my heroes? The characters in the movies I loved? Ariel, the little mermaid and her pale sistern. Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, the epitome of white girl California perfection.
So reading about Oscar's inherent uber-nerdiness? Having to struggle with his super macho male relatives attitudes towards his virginity? Yeah. I could identify with that, as well as the struggle and heartbreak each of his relative goes through just trying to live life. So much emphasis in Hispanic culture and literature deals with perseverence through tragedy, though the ties to your family history for good or bad and an overlaying passion that causes us to tilt at windmills, move to a different country to create a future for our families, defend whores that are married to gangsters. I think every Hispanic family has this rich culture of mythology and almost ghost stories that are passed down. A lot of the younger generations in America just roll their eyes--we're content to instead learn about Nintendo, the internet, gentrification, indie music, German heavy metal, Lord of the Rings and Dungeon and Dragons. I am the only Catholic out of all the grandchildren on my paternal side, and I'm not even confirmed. My grandfather was well along in his preparations to be a priest when he met my grandmother. Of course I over-identify with Oscar's love of anime and high fantasy instead of his own culture. I'm compelled to do so. It's in my blood, too.
But it seems to me that regardless of how much you ignore your elders' talking, it comes home to roost. If it's Oscar's family's curse, the thickening of your waistline into an exact replica of your aunt's or even the food you crave or a superstition. And this book made me wonder a lot more about all that aspect of my personality, as well as an incredible story that made me want to read everything Junot Diaz has ever written, ever. A very emotional, visceral blunt novel that still managed to leave me wanting more. Like I said, I love it.
Forever Odd & Odd Hours by Dean Koontz
Since this is a series, I'll discuss these two together.
I'd borrowed the second and third, but as the people owning the series had lost the second and fourth, I just went ahead and read them out of order. This entry will be pretty spoiler-heavy as it's hard to discuss any of the events in the latter books without revealing what caused them.
Brief Summary:
A young fry cook named Odd Thomas can see ghosts, spirits and the occasional "other" sort of entity. He uses this sensitivity to help solve the murders of some of these ghosts, aid others in crossing over and to even help stop or prevent certain tragedies (like a shooting or the full scale slaughter of the entire population of a monastery). The love of his live and soulmate, Stormy, is killed in the first book, though it isn't immediately apparent that she actually dies (it's kinda like a less crappy scene from Ghost... only less pottery wheel and bad early nineties hair), so a lot of the rest of the novels deals with him dealing with his grief.
Odd is also haunted by the ghost of Elvis, who believes that Odd is his best hope of crossing over and then later by the ghost of Frank Sinatra, who even helps him out by exhibiting poltergeist tendencies when provoked. His companion in the last two book is a ghost labrador affectionately named Boo. His human compatriots include a chief of police who helps keep him out of the public eye, the folk he's gotten to know at the diner where he became a fry cook and his friend Ozzie, an overweight gourmet-slash-mystery writer. Over the series, Odd prevents a shooting spree, helps save a friend who's kidnapped by an occult-obsessed woman who wants to exploit Odd's sensitivity to spirits and his magnetism for energies, rids a monastery of quasi-mystical science conjured creatures and prevents a pregnant woman from being murdered and the US getting nuked by your typical evil to the bone group of morons.
Forever Odd:
I liked this one. I often find myself a little... embarassed? when I read something like this, the sort of grocery store novels that a lot of my more literary-minded friends would just sneer at. It's easy to dismiss anything popular as trash but darn it, it's enjoyable. Think of it as popcorn literature. You can't always go around eating rich foods, you'd die of surfeit. Same with books. Everything can't be so overtly serious, in the intellectual sense. Either way, I liked it.
In the aftermath of Stormy's death, Odd's having a hard time with his life as Elvis is with passing on. His childhood buddy Danny gets kidnapped by a psychopath who wants to use him to make Odd use his powers according to her designs and he's got to come to the rescue. I think the main part of this novel that stuck with me was the guilt. The recurring theory that Elvis lingers because of the guilt he feels at facing his mom after dying a superstar, but one with a drug problem and unfulfilled potential. Danny's guilt at having revealed so much as to inspire the psycho to want to use Odd's powers. Odd's guilt and grief deal with not only his inability to use his 'gift' to prevent Stormy's death, but the fact that it can harm people he loves no matter the circumstance. At the end, it's no surprise that Odd ends up escaping to the would-be peace of a monastery.
I view this entire series as a coming of age story. So this particular book reminded me of the end of your teen years, end of high school. You're further along in figuring out who you are, but you've never had to test it. If you linger, you won't grow, you won't be productive and you might even just become a burden on the people you love. So you deal with the sucky parts of moving on and then you do it. Pretty straightforward, though the metaphor I just made here is entirely my own baggage coming out to play. It never mentions anything like that in the book.
Odd Hours:
Odd has helped Elvis cross over and vanquished the monastery monsters and he's now working as a chef/assistant to former movie star. Now he has Frank Sinatra hanging around and the spectral dog, Boo. He dreams of a pregnant woman who he's seen at the lighthouse he often visits to look over the ocean. Suffice to say, amidst drama, intrigue, coyotes and lots of shennanigans, Odd manages to save the lady, Annamaria, from being murdered and the US from being nuked.
I still kind of look at the nuclear attack storyline askance. It made me kinda go, huh, really? REALLY? But within the world of the story, it's sorta forgivable. This was the book that made me realise, too, what a dog lover Dean Koontz is. There's references to the joy provided by dogs, discussion of how unlike humans, most dogs prefer not to linger, talk about the way dogs laugh. It made me like the book a little better. I'm beginning to realise how all-encompassing my passion for dogs and animal welfare really is. This was, in my opinion, one of the weaker of the series as far as story and stronger in terms of theme. Although I highly enjoyed it and would read it again, I wouldn't describe it as my favorite.
The overwhelming theme I got from this one was loneliness. If I stick to my coming of age story idea, this is more like your early midtwenties. You've done a lot of your growing up, but you're not quite done. You've got a pretty good idea of what you can do with who you are, but not how to apply it quite yet. You're setting down roots, but you don't know where you belong. Odd can't make friends, can't stay in one place because he has to use his gift to help but he's constantly bombarded by serendipity and the chance good he witnesses in strangers. It helps balance out the cruelty and out and out evil he witnesses in the world.
Wrap It Up:
This series is, maybe as should be expected, a little predictable and at times kind of over the top. But above all, it's fun. It's easy to read and has characters that I really liked and cared for. I don't mind suspending my disbelief and accepting that, yeah, a fry cook can see things others can't. That there are real evil, real monsters and real interactions with them in the world. So I'm pretty excited about this series, still, and I'm really looking forward to reading the graphic novel, In Odd We Trust and whatever future titles Dean Koontz churns out. Bring on the popcorn.
I'd borrowed the second and third, but as the people owning the series had lost the second and fourth, I just went ahead and read them out of order. This entry will be pretty spoiler-heavy as it's hard to discuss any of the events in the latter books without revealing what caused them.
Brief Summary:
A young fry cook named Odd Thomas can see ghosts, spirits and the occasional "other" sort of entity. He uses this sensitivity to help solve the murders of some of these ghosts, aid others in crossing over and to even help stop or prevent certain tragedies (like a shooting or the full scale slaughter of the entire population of a monastery). The love of his live and soulmate, Stormy, is killed in the first book, though it isn't immediately apparent that she actually dies (it's kinda like a less crappy scene from Ghost... only less pottery wheel and bad early nineties hair), so a lot of the rest of the novels deals with him dealing with his grief.
Odd is also haunted by the ghost of Elvis, who believes that Odd is his best hope of crossing over and then later by the ghost of Frank Sinatra, who even helps him out by exhibiting poltergeist tendencies when provoked. His companion in the last two book is a ghost labrador affectionately named Boo. His human compatriots include a chief of police who helps keep him out of the public eye, the folk he's gotten to know at the diner where he became a fry cook and his friend Ozzie, an overweight gourmet-slash-mystery writer. Over the series, Odd prevents a shooting spree, helps save a friend who's kidnapped by an occult-obsessed woman who wants to exploit Odd's sensitivity to spirits and his magnetism for energies, rids a monastery of quasi-mystical science conjured creatures and prevents a pregnant woman from being murdered and the US getting nuked by your typical evil to the bone group of morons.
Forever Odd:
I liked this one. I often find myself a little... embarassed? when I read something like this, the sort of grocery store novels that a lot of my more literary-minded friends would just sneer at. It's easy to dismiss anything popular as trash but darn it, it's enjoyable. Think of it as popcorn literature. You can't always go around eating rich foods, you'd die of surfeit. Same with books. Everything can't be so overtly serious, in the intellectual sense. Either way, I liked it.
In the aftermath of Stormy's death, Odd's having a hard time with his life as Elvis is with passing on. His childhood buddy Danny gets kidnapped by a psychopath who wants to use him to make Odd use his powers according to her designs and he's got to come to the rescue. I think the main part of this novel that stuck with me was the guilt. The recurring theory that Elvis lingers because of the guilt he feels at facing his mom after dying a superstar, but one with a drug problem and unfulfilled potential. Danny's guilt at having revealed so much as to inspire the psycho to want to use Odd's powers. Odd's guilt and grief deal with not only his inability to use his 'gift' to prevent Stormy's death, but the fact that it can harm people he loves no matter the circumstance. At the end, it's no surprise that Odd ends up escaping to the would-be peace of a monastery.
I view this entire series as a coming of age story. So this particular book reminded me of the end of your teen years, end of high school. You're further along in figuring out who you are, but you've never had to test it. If you linger, you won't grow, you won't be productive and you might even just become a burden on the people you love. So you deal with the sucky parts of moving on and then you do it. Pretty straightforward, though the metaphor I just made here is entirely my own baggage coming out to play. It never mentions anything like that in the book.
Odd Hours:
Odd has helped Elvis cross over and vanquished the monastery monsters and he's now working as a chef/assistant to former movie star. Now he has Frank Sinatra hanging around and the spectral dog, Boo. He dreams of a pregnant woman who he's seen at the lighthouse he often visits to look over the ocean. Suffice to say, amidst drama, intrigue, coyotes and lots of shennanigans, Odd manages to save the lady, Annamaria, from being murdered and the US from being nuked.
I still kind of look at the nuclear attack storyline askance. It made me kinda go, huh, really? REALLY? But within the world of the story, it's sorta forgivable. This was the book that made me realise, too, what a dog lover Dean Koontz is. There's references to the joy provided by dogs, discussion of how unlike humans, most dogs prefer not to linger, talk about the way dogs laugh. It made me like the book a little better. I'm beginning to realise how all-encompassing my passion for dogs and animal welfare really is. This was, in my opinion, one of the weaker of the series as far as story and stronger in terms of theme. Although I highly enjoyed it and would read it again, I wouldn't describe it as my favorite.
The overwhelming theme I got from this one was loneliness. If I stick to my coming of age story idea, this is more like your early midtwenties. You've done a lot of your growing up, but you're not quite done. You've got a pretty good idea of what you can do with who you are, but not how to apply it quite yet. You're setting down roots, but you don't know where you belong. Odd can't make friends, can't stay in one place because he has to use his gift to help but he's constantly bombarded by serendipity and the chance good he witnesses in strangers. It helps balance out the cruelty and out and out evil he witnesses in the world.
Wrap It Up:
This series is, maybe as should be expected, a little predictable and at times kind of over the top. But above all, it's fun. It's easy to read and has characters that I really liked and cared for. I don't mind suspending my disbelief and accepting that, yeah, a fry cook can see things others can't. That there are real evil, real monsters and real interactions with them in the world. So I'm pretty excited about this series, still, and I'm really looking forward to reading the graphic novel, In Odd We Trust and whatever future titles Dean Koontz churns out. Bring on the popcorn.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Introduction.
I am a person who does not fall in love often. Consequently, when I do fall, I tend to stay fallen. Thus far, my great passions in life are animals (especially dogs), writing, music, tattoos and books. The greatest of all these loves is books.
I've spent practically all my life in love with words, expression and stories. As I grew older, this grew into a love of books themselves. The smell, look, and even the feel of books has grown into a passion that equals my love for the stories they contain.
In short, I'm a bibliophile. One of those people who has to decide each month whether my expendable (and often my not-so-expendable) income goes towards going out to movies and buying drinks--or if I need a couple more books. One of those people who always carries a book in their bag. One of those people who can't have a conversation without quoting or referencing something "I read the other day." One of those people who cringes at the latest Hollywood adaptation of a much-beloved tome. One of those people who can't imagine their life without reading.
Most of the time, though, as with anything, if you don't preserve the memories of things you love, they tend to slip away. And for the next year, I'm not going to let my books do that. Even if it's just this once, I want to have a year in my reading life laid out in one place so I can see any patters that emerge. Each entry may be about a single book or may cover several books I've read over the past while. The point is not to summarise, critique, or review, though I may do all three. I'm mostly going to react to each and see where it takes me.
Maybe it's about learning something about myself through what I read. Maybe it's just seeing where my reading journey takes me. Either way. It's a year of my world full of books and learning.
I've spent practically all my life in love with words, expression and stories. As I grew older, this grew into a love of books themselves. The smell, look, and even the feel of books has grown into a passion that equals my love for the stories they contain.
In short, I'm a bibliophile. One of those people who has to decide each month whether my expendable (and often my not-so-expendable) income goes towards going out to movies and buying drinks--or if I need a couple more books. One of those people who always carries a book in their bag. One of those people who can't have a conversation without quoting or referencing something "I read the other day." One of those people who cringes at the latest Hollywood adaptation of a much-beloved tome. One of those people who can't imagine their life without reading.
Most of the time, though, as with anything, if you don't preserve the memories of things you love, they tend to slip away. And for the next year, I'm not going to let my books do that. Even if it's just this once, I want to have a year in my reading life laid out in one place so I can see any patters that emerge. Each entry may be about a single book or may cover several books I've read over the past while. The point is not to summarise, critique, or review, though I may do all three. I'm mostly going to react to each and see where it takes me.
Maybe it's about learning something about myself through what I read. Maybe it's just seeing where my reading journey takes me. Either way. It's a year of my world full of books and learning.
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